Author: Xaviar Xerexes

I helped create Comixpedia and ComixTalk. Currently working on finishing a lot of unfinished comics and novels.
Blog / Comics

Strip Search #10: Opposite World

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_kLmzenGLo?rel=0] Great episode and probably the most intense “draw-off” competition yet.  I did not agree with the judges decision this time but I kind of get why they went the way they did. Interestingly enough it looks like the average for the Strip Show episodes right now is somewhere just south of 50,000 views (I’m assuming each one is posted once to YouTube) although the first episode is at 80,000.  I wonder what the expectation was going in and whether it’s doing better or worse than that.

Blog / Games

My Favorite: Videogames: FPS + RPG

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There are only a handful of videogames that I have really and truly loved like a book, comic, movie or song.  The ones that readily come to mind are all post-school for me when computer technology finally got to the point where graphics and gameplay enabled the kind of world building and immersive story-telling that was a generation beyond the Atari 2600 games of my childhood.  It’s also when I finally had enough money to afford a decent PC and the games themselves. I like the challenge of games but I don’t love it; no more than I love the …

Blog / Comics

Exactly What Is It That Birds Know?

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What Birds Know is a creepy, coming-of-age webcomic that’s updated for something like 7 years or so now.  I reviewed it enthusiastically for ComixTalk many years ago and just started catching back up on it on Comic Rocket. Starting over, I remember why I liked it, it starts off in a fantasy, medieval village where three young friends have been assigned a field trip to collect 100 mushrooms for their school.  The opening scene of them collecting their stuff, saying goodbye to family shows so much about the three main characters without the need for clumsy telling. It’s quite good …

Blog / Comics / Music

Even Dave Grohl thinks Foo Fighters is a dumb name for a band

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Really cool speech from Dave Grohl at this year’s SXSW – check it out at the NPR website (doesn’t seem to be a way to embed the video).  Grohl has been busy – working on a new Foo Fighters album, and the documentary he did on the Sound City recording studio where Nirvana’s Nevermind album was recorded. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQoOfiLz1G4?rel=0] I just drove by this which is the title of a song on the Foo Fighters first album: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egEcrXjgYYw?rel=0]

Blog / Comics

Strip Search Recap: Tweet This Kurtzie!

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Episode Eight is called Drawing Blind and involved a contest where the contestants paired up and then each had to draw a picture they couldn’t see but that their partner described with words. Is this at all relevant to making webcomics? I guess a little — working with a writer or just two or more creators collaborating would need to share ideas. Words do help but I imagine most creators do like to share thumbnail sketches.  The results of this contest are pretty good evidence that words alone are not enough for a good working webcomic collaboration. Nevertheless per the …

Blog / Culture

Wrangling the Family Photo Collection

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I grew up with film not digital cameras.  My whole life has been a constant stream of changes so I’m never surprised at how different things are from childhood to adulthood but it doesn’t make it any easier. Families stored all kinds of FILM capturing memories when I was a kid. That doesn’t mean anything anymore. I do have stuff in boxes but it’s an entirely digital world now. And how you store that binary code is different too.  At one time it made a lot of sense to back up things on CD-ROMS. Now with the explosion in the …